


your whole life (you never once asked me that)

by TolkienGirl



Series: Vintage Winchesters: Season 1 Tags [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s01e02 Wendigo, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Memories, POV Sam Winchester, The Impala (Supernatural), stages of grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:34:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24565471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Constance Welch didn’t feel like a killing. The Wendigo, of course, did. In between those two is all that Sam can see, these days.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester
Series: Vintage Winchesters: Season 1 Tags [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1777720
Comments: 2
Kudos: 27





	your whole life (you never once asked me that)

All this time later, all this loss, and Sam still admires his brother.

If he weren’t a Winchester, he’d say it. If he weren’t a Winchester, he’d be a whole world of other people, hopes and dreams enough to fill a family’s worth of men tucked inside him. Law school or history? Art or music? He’d have so much more time to decide.

As it is, he has only his anger. Yes, he’ll name it that, the thing that keeps him quiet, keeps him a little edgy with Dean, whose eyes say everything and whose mouth says just about anything else. _Sam_ will say that anger is like a slip of paper held up to endless light, but also and at the same time, anger is what pokes bullet-holes through paper and pain alike. What shines through is the shape of whatever has hurt him.

(You have to hold the anger up above.)

Dean is a comfortable shadow, _his_ shape known, blackened by midnight’s forgiveness. Dean doesn’t like to be held up. Elevated. _Put on a fucking pedestal, now really, Sammy, what will that get you but disappointment?_

Damn, but it’s good to be in the driver’s seat.

Damn, but it’s—

Sam switches lanes. The highway is empty. The country road before the state route before the highway was empty, too.

Constance Welch didn’t feel like a killing. The Wendigo, of course, _did._ In between those two is all that Sam can see, these days.

He blinks, and there’s Jess. He finds a cigarette and shreds it, the paper in snowflakes, the tobacco unspooling. There’s Jess. She only smoked when she was drunk.

Dean takes over the wheel on hour seven. This is at dawn. Dawn, and they’re long gone from Colorado. 

_What am I going to tell you_ , Sam asks silently, watching and not watching from the passenger side. _When I finally break, what am I going to ask you?_

These might as well be essay questions. ( _Essayer_ , Jess says, French class Jess, waving a flashcard at him. _It means to try._ ) Interview questions, for the gig he’ll never claim now.

He has no job competition in this world.

He almost has no future.

“You hungry?” Dean asks.

“Nah.” Sam studies the smear of a bug on the windshield instead of deciding what the growl in his stomach portends. Dean patched the windshield up, and replaced the driver’s side window, since Sam rammed into the Welch homestead to make some eternal point.

Dean did all that in Palo Alto, when Sam wanted to be with Jess’ family, or when Sam wanted to be alone.

Sometimes the two were the same thing. It had been a strain when she was alive, playing like he was someone they could trust and respect.

It was a torment, now.

“Dean…” he says, into the light of morning.

“What?” Dean sounds the same, no matter the time of day. He’s always perfectly at ease when he’s driving.

“Nevermind,” Sam says.

He isn’t broken yet.


End file.
